


Partridge Fallen From the Tree

by severinne



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: Angst, Christmas, M/M, Prostitution, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-27
Updated: 2011-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:15:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The holidays have left Leonard McCoy even more short of credits than usual, driving him to offer his services to a stranger visiting Georgia on some unknown errand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The bar and lounge of the Partridge Inn was playing up to all the Old South traditions perpetuated by the hotel and had decked itself out accordingly with all the trappings of Christmases long gone. Garlands of green draped themselves from one high window to the next, richly tied with red and gold ribbons and dense with golden lights. With the existing chandeliers turned low, the strings of tiny lights and the burn of real candles cast the long room in a glow that was as festive as it was intimate.

One year ago, Leonard might have found comfort in the mood of the season. Now, it seemed as falsely painted as his own life had become.

He crossed his ankle over his knee, skimmed a nervous thumb along the inseam of his best pair of trousers. The concierge behind the front desk had glanced towards his armchair in the corner several times too many, enough for Leonard to know that he was close to being recognized. Which wasn’t damn well fair play; he had only targeted this hotel twice before and only when his need for credits was dire enough to risk starvation or eviction from his one-room apartment.

The first two times had come by poor luck when the odd jobs he had gleaned from the private firms in Augusta’s Medical District had dried up; taking those occasional contracts was risky work anyway with his suspended license on record, so ebbs and flows in the availability of discrete research work were to be expected. This time, however, Leonard had no one to blame but himself and his damn fool heart for pausing too long at the window display of a downtown jeweler’s shop on his long walk home last week.

The drop earrings that had stolen his imagination and the last of his most recent pay packet were far too expensive for an out-of-work doctor struggling with alimony payments, but they were exactly to Joanna’s precocious tastes and far too precious for Jocelyn to throw out as she might have done with any other Christmas gift Leonard would have sent to his daughter. Or so he had reassured himself as he had arranged for the shopkeeper to gift-wrap the earrings and have them delivered to his former address back in Atlanta. Jocelyn was spiteful, but she was not wasteful with luxuries.

Leonard absently followed the precise path a particularly well-groomed lady carved across the lounge, taking in her off-world jewels and authoritative air but rejecting the idea all the same. His first client had been a woman who radiated that same regal confidence. He would have bet double or nothing on his earnings for the night that she worked in the higher echelons of Federation politics, but he had not dared to ask, had kept his half of the conversation down to sighs and groans while she rode him to multiple orgasms and dismissed him not ten minutes after the job was done.

Once alone in his downtown hovel, Leonard had wretched and shaken for hours, hating how easily she had reminded him of Jocelyn.

After that, he made it a rule to stick to men – impersonal, direct, and free of any negative associations. Part of him relished the choice as a deliberate slight against the ex-wife who had barely tolerated his interest in both sexes, though something darker still wondered whether he simply preferred to be used for a man’s pleasures, whether it was easier to play his ridiculously outdated role when forced to his hands and knees.

Regardless of his reasoning, the fact remained that Leonard needed to find a customer and get to work before the concierge called the hotel manager, and unaccompanied men were thin on the ground tonight. His options seemed to be limited to a sleek and haughty young thing smirking down at the PADD in his lap and a lean older man at the bar who appeared to be arguing into his personal comm. The deep timbre of his voice carried across the room, compelling Leonard’s eye to linger over the hard flash of his eyes, the tightening of long fingers around the comm in his hand.

‘I told you, Phil, no one around here seems to know where he is. So unless you’ve got some other…’ The man snapped his jaw shut, eyes narrowing as a thin crackle of reply came back at him through his comm. ‘Fine. Look, I’m stuck here until morning anyway, so you’ve got that long to get me some better intel before I call this off and head back…. Yeah. Guess I’ll be seeing you tomorrow then.’

The man snapped his comm shut and shoved it into the pocket of his casual slacks with a resigned air, then signaled the bartender for another drink.

Suddenly relieved that his own glass had stood empty this last twenty minutes, Leonard rose smoothly to his feet and crossed the hotel’s lounge to the bar. He arrived just in time to see the bartender serve up something neat and uncomplicated to the out of town guest, so Leonard slipped alongside and lazily announced, ‘I’ll have the same as the gentleman here, thanks.’

As planned, the order snared the other man’s attention. He turned slowly at the waist, revealing a handsome face lined with quizzical surprise. ‘Do you even know what I ordered?’ he asked dryly, head tilting aside with enough of a playful edge to give Leonard hope.

‘Nope,’ he replied honestly, smiling at the bartender as he returned with a matching glass two fingers deep with amber liquor. ‘But I like my chances.’

Intelligent blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully on him as Leonard raised his glass in a mock toast before taking a testing sip. Brandy, he decided, and damned expensive judging from the complex layers of sweetness and heat rolling over his tongue. With a satisfied hum, he swallowed with a lingering lick at the moisture clinging to his lips, clocking the other man’s sustained attention with a quick sidelong glance.

‘So,’ he said, letting his glass rest on the shining wood of the bar, ‘what brings you to Augusta?’

The traveler fixed him with a suspicious frown that softened quickly enough under Leonard’s bland courtesy. With a sigh, he leaned an arm against the bar: the coiled tension of his frame gradually unwinding, the fine lines around his eyes smoothing out. ‘Been trying to find a doctor,’ he said, glancing around sharply when Leonard barked a bitter, involuntary laugh. ‘What’s so funny?’ he snapped.

‘Nothing.’ Leonard shook his head, sobering quickly. ‘Nothing at all,’ he added in an undertone. The stranger’s prolonged scrutiny in the wake of that slip almost made Leonard squirm but he twisted through the discomfort instead, turning to rest an elbow against the bar, tilting his hips into a pose of affected ease. ‘You came to the right place,’ he drawled, ‘plenty of doctors working those private clinics down The Hill.’

‘In Summerhill, you mean?’ The stranger sighed wearily at Leonard’s affirming nod. ‘Sure, lots of clinics, and they’re none too forthcoming about their staff as far as I can tell.’

‘Too damn right,’ Leonard agreed, silently grateful for the fact. ‘Some of the most secretive bastards around these days, and that’s saying something when everyone around these parts tend to play their cards close to the chest.’

The other man laughed a touch wearily. ‘Sounds about right,’ he said, looking upward again with a gaze that had gone warm, more welcoming. ‘I take it you’re from around here, then,’ he observed with a tentative smile that Leonard returned.

‘And what makes you think that?’

He shrugged. ‘Might have something to do with that accent of yours,’ he said lightly, smile widening in a way that made Leonard’s breath catch in his throat. ‘I swear you could make the weather grid reports sound attractive.’

Feigning a gentle cough, Leonard ducked his head to conceal an unexpected blush. This man had eased into flirting well before Leonard was ready to take it there, and flattering though it was to be on the receiving end of this sort of attention for a change – especially from such a charismatic man as this – the sudden reversal made his chest clench uncomfortably.

‘So tell me,’ he continued, gaze shifting down to take in the entirety of Leonard’s body before dragging back up to his face, ‘what’s a handsome local gentleman like you doing in this hotel?’

The foreboding panic clutching his heart throbbed deeper, more painful than ever. He glanced down at the polished wood surface beneath his drink, watching the reflections of countless tiny golden lights glowing, fading, and glowing again from the garlands strung above the bar. A puddle of condensation made one star burn brighter than the others, and for a delirious moment Leonard wondered what it would be like to answer that question like a man and not like a whore, what sort of night this could become if this were a meeting of equals, both gifted with endless time in which to feel each other out through teasing words and thoughtful courtship.

For a moment, Leonard wondered if he could lie, if he could bail out with some story about visiting relations for the holidays and let the promise in this stranger’s eyes run its course towards something more natural, more normal.

Leonard literally couldn’t afford natural or normal anymore.

‘Me?’ With a frown as tiny as the lights, Leonard rubbed out the spot of liquid with his thumb, smearing the star out of sight. ‘Guess you could say I’m in the business of providing hospitality to visitors such as yourself.’

‘Hospitality.’ Leonard repressed a disappointed flinch as the traveler straightened from his casual slouch, every honed edge of his body set back on alert. ‘You’re a prostitute,’ he concluded blankly.

The flush of flattery that had been crawling down Leonard’s neck deepened into humiliation. ‘Something like that,’ he admitted. Damn, but he hated this part.

‘I see.’ The traveler pursed his lips, and Leonard’s heart hammered in his chest as he fought to stand his ground. This wasn’t a rejection, not yet. ‘Are you registered?’

‘No, sir,’ he replied breezily, feeling once more the worst kind of hypocrite, reflecting on so many lectures given to so many hollowed-out kids back in the emergency ward at Emory. Registration was the best thing going for safety in this line of work, but the way Leonard saw it, he was far beyond help anyway. ‘Whatever happens, there’ll be no trace of it,’ he promised smoothly. ‘No transaction history, no names.’

The traveler nodded once, a subtle dip of his chin that locked his gaze downward into his drink. ‘And what if I wanted to know your name?’ he asked quietly.

‘You could ask.’

‘And I suppose you would lie.’

Something in the other man’s brittle disappointment pricked at Leonard’s once-decent conscience. He could, maybe, save this with some other lie – throw down a false name with all the sincerity he could muster - but for once he wanted to be as honest as he could afford, if only for this one stranger. ‘It’s really for the best if I do,’ he replied softly. ‘And knowing my name wouldn’t make a lick of difference anyway.’

The traveler lifted his head to return his gaze, and Leonard was stricken by the flint-edged hardness that now chilled his blue eyes. For a moment, he was convinced that he had failed, then the man’s gaze swept down and up again in an overt assessment that set a different kind of chill racing down Leonard’s spine.

‘Fine,’ he said coolly, with an indifference that was too sudden to sound unforced. ‘How much do you charge, then?’

The question was so harshly spat out that Leonard instinctively scanned the bar for eavesdroppers. Paranoid heat was creeping up the collar of his shirt and he almost wanted to laugh with relief that he still knew how to feel this kind of shame. ‘We probably shouldn’t discuss that out in the open here,’ he muttered.

‘You don’t say,’ the man said sardonically, eyes narrowing. ‘I’d offer to take this conversation upstairs to my room, but sounds like that isn’t happening unless I pay for it.’

Leonard cringed behind his raised glass. ‘Conversation is free,’ he pointed out defensively.

‘And going upstairs without knowing what I’m paying for is a waste of my time.’ A hint of cruelty lashed out from his low voice. ‘How much.’

With a sneaking suspicion that his potential client was sadistic asshole looking to deepen his humiliation before cutting him loose, Leonard grit his teeth and mentally added an exorbitant percentage to his usual rate. ‘Six hundred credits.’

The traveler raised an eyebrow, but seemed otherwise unmoved. ‘And what does that get me, exactly?’

‘Two hours,’ he snapped.

‘Two hours of what?’

‘Of piano lessons, you moron.’ Leonard took an angry gulp of brandy, pouring more fire on his tongue. ‘What the hell do you think? You pay, you take me upstairs, you fuck me however the hell you like, preferably without leaving a battered corpse behind when you’re done. I’d lay it out for you sweeter than that, but _that’s_ the sort of conversation you’ve got to pay for.’

He turned pointedly away, staring unblinking with burning eyes at the garlands draped behind the bar, seething with frustration and degradation that he fought to shove away with every steadying breath. All he could do was remain composed and keep his idiot mouth shut for however long it took for the traveler to move along, and hope that he could still earn this month’s rent elsewhere, but without looking he could still feel the heated presence of the man lingering at his side.

His doctor’s instincts couldn’t help but notice that the stranger’s breathing wasn’t terribly even either.

Leonard heard the shift of clothing over his compact figure as he moved, and he ducked his own head to hide any involuntary show of disappointment. He fixed his gaze firmly into the last centimeter of bourbon lining his glass, and sank so deeply in its shallows that the clatter of a credit chip landing next to his hand nearly made him jump out of his skin.

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Now who’s being obtuse?’ When Leonard looked up in shock, the first thing he noticed about the other man was the unmistakable lust glazing his eyes. ‘Six hundred credits? Transfer it right now if you like.’

This wasn’t the reaction Leonard had expected. He gaped silently for several beats, then shook his head. ‘Why…’

‘Because so long as you’re offering, I have every intention of fucking you however the hell I like,’ he interrupted, low and if Leonard wasn’t mistaken, just a touch needy. ‘Sooner rather than later, if you don’t mind.’

Still stunned, Leonard picked up the credit chip with nervous fingers and fumbled for his personal comm, clumsily activating a transfer of six hundred credits into his account. The new funds appeared instantly on his balance, heavy with consequence.

He mutely passed the chip back to his new client, felt a frisson of anticipation when warm and confident fingertips cast a proprietary sweep over the back of his hand.

‘Finish your drink,’ he said firmly, and Leonard obeyed without question. The traveler had bought that right now. ‘Follow me.’

Leonard let the man move ahead before falling into step a little ways behind, keeping a discrete distance through the lobby to the antique cage doors of the lift. His client neatly locked the outdated contrivance into place with a foreboding rattle, and Leonard closed his eyes as he heard the familiar hum of the refitted hover-mechanisms taking over the lift’s upward journey.

With Leonard too preoccupied with settling his nerves, it was the other man who broke the silence. ‘I’m Christopher,’ he said, so plainly abrupt that Leonard immediately knew without doubt that it was the man’s true name. He nodded, offered a hesitant smile.

‘That your way of asking for my name?’ he drawled back, leaning into the lift’s wall, hand curled securely around its brass rail.

Christopher hesitated; his lips parted, then he frowned and shook his head. ‘Not interested in a lie.’

For a mad moment, Leonard considered calling the bluff and giving this Christopher the truth he so clearly craved – surely there was no harm in just his first name? But shame and self-preservation held him back once more, and Leonard was such an unattractive name anyway. ‘Whatever will you call me, then?’ he remarked instead.

A lush smirk stretched at Christopher’s lips, lewd as the gaze he swept back down over Leonard’s body. ‘I’m sure I’ll think of a few things.’

  



	2. Chapter 2

The balcony room Christopher had taken for the night was spacious by a single traveler’s standards, though he had opted for a queen size bed rather than the king chosen by the first client Leonard had met at this hotel.

To his added relief, the room wasn’t nearly as large and ostentatious as the executive suite where Leonard had found himself entertaining that party of visiting diplomats three months ago. Shuddering off that particular memory, Leonard focused instead on unfastening the buttons of his suit jacket but Christopher’s surprisingly strong hand on his wrist stopped him partway.

‘What are you doing?’

Leonard raised an eyebrow. ‘This isn’t the sort of job one normally does with his clothes on, you know.’ His tone was inappropriately sarcastic, but Christopher’s mouth twitched with amusement rather than annoyance.

‘But I haven’t told you what I want yet.’

‘Alright.’ Leonard dropped his hands to his sides. ‘So what do you want?’

‘Is that how this works?’ A disappointed note entered Christopher’s voice. ‘I tell you what I want, and you give it up just like that?’

‘Pretty much, yeah…. provided it’s nothing life threatening, of course,’ he added warningly, but his client still wore that same expression of mild distaste at his explanation. ‘If you want me to resist, or pretend I don’t want…’ he cleared his throat nervously, ‘I guess I could…’

‘What?’ Christopher’s eyes widened in horror. ‘No,’ he snapped hastily, ‘no, that’s not what I…’ He trailed off with a harsh exhale through his nose, frowning down at his feet. ‘Look, I…’ He sighed, shook his head. ‘I don’t normally do this.’

‘What, have sex?’ Leonard asked dubiously. ‘With men?’

‘With whores,’ he corrected sharply. As soon as he said it, Christopher flinched, lips tightening as though the word had tasted bad in his mouth. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t…’

‘I don’t normally do this either.’

Christopher looked up with a skeptical squint. ‘Do you say that to all your customers?’

‘No, damn it, it’s the fucking truth,’ he barked bitterly, patience snapping at the judgmental note in Christopher’s voice. ‘It’s not like I did my doctorate in cocksucking, for crying out loud.’ He reeled back as soon as the words left his mouth, panic-stricken heart pounding as he fought to compose his raw nerves, to comprehend how the hell this was already going so wrong. Something about Christopher’s unspoken expectations kept sparking off every vulnerable edge that Leonard usually hid away at times like this. He scrubbed a frustrated hand over his face, drew in a slow breath.

‘Sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘Forget I said it, I was just being… well, never mind, it’s not–’

‘Stop.’ The quiet command of that one syllable killed Leonard’s sloppy apology dead in its tracks. Christopher was still staring at him with narrowed eyes that had shifted from open doubt to some other unreadable reaction. ‘Come here. Please.’

Relieved to have a simple order at last, Leonard crossed the several paces between them without hesitation, moving smoothly into the hand that Christopher curled around his hip. From this close, he realized that he stood a couple inches taller than the other man, and deferentially bowed his head when Christopher’s other hand combed its way into his hair and slipped to the back of his neck.

‘Is it alright if I kiss you?’ The breath of his question fell close enough to brush Leonard’s lips with a subtle heat that made the rest of his body shiver.

‘Yeah,’ he said, and the gentle pressure of Christopher’s mouth took over while his lips were still parted, the agile tip of his tongue tracing tenderly over the inward shape of his mouth without penetrating any deeper. Compared to the assertive and even violent kisses Leonard usually received these days from the very few clients who even bothered with this level of intimacy, Christopher was painstakingly considerate, almost tentative.

That the kiss felt like an apology for all that was yet to come was more than a little bit terrifying.

When Christopher finally broke the kiss, Leonard found himself still leaning instinctively forward as though seeking out more. He flushed at his stupidity, closed his eyes.

‘Do you still want to be here?’ Christopher asked softly, and Leonard huffed his wry amusement. Forget apologies, that kiss had been designed to keep him in place and damn this bastard, but it had worked.

‘Sure,’ he agreed, allowing himself a small smile. ‘You already paid, after all.’

Christopher’s eyes narrowed again to that assessing squint that pierced too cleanly into Leonard’s conscience. ‘Why don’t you go have a shower then?’ he offered, tilting his head towards the bathroom.

Having long since learned that such suggestions were usually as good as commands, he nodded mutely and let himself into the en suite bathroom. Though confused – and maybe, just a little disappointed – that Christopher did not follow, he got the water running in the large shower cubicle and obediently set to removing and neatly folding his suit.

He had finished stripping and was testing the water temperature when the bathroom door opened again and Christopher slipped in, still fully clothed with a generously filled glass of something amber in his hand. The reappearance of his client startled Leonard more than it should have done, and he silently berated himself as he hesitated at the shower door. For all that Leonard had stopped thinking of his body as anything but a surgically detached commodity, the sweep of Christopher’s eyes over his bared skin was strangely unnerving.

‘Care to join me?’ he offered hoarsely, gesturing into the steaming shower cubicle.

‘Not yet.’ Christopher sipped his drink, leaned back against the wide bathroom countertop and raised his eyebrows expectantly. Leonard resisted rolling his eyes until he turned away to step into the shower, uncomfortably aware that the cubicle’s transparent aluminum walls concealed nothing. If he had wanted to go the performance route, he would have become a stripper instead of a whore, he ruminated miserably as the shower’s spray rapidly soaked his skin.

All the same, he worked a bar of soap into a heavy lather and set to washing himself as slowly as he could manage – he had already bathed before making his way out to the Partridge Inn so there was no sense in pretending this shower was anything other than a cheap erotic spectacle. He closed his eyes as his slick hands worked their way across and down his chest and ribcage, hoping to stifle his awareness of the voyeur outside the shower but his mind conjured its own image of Christopher perched at his leisure, head cocked to the side while his too-knowing eyes drank in all that he had paid for. Leonard’s hand slipped further down to his stirring groin, and the imagined impression of Christopher’s hand in place of his own made his eyes fly open again on a faint gasp.

Abandoning all hope of forgetting his client’s irrefutable presence, Leonard glanced out in his direction as he bent to run a soapy hand over his calf and thigh. The shower’s steam obscured his view but Christopher was fixed in the same spot, features unreadable through the fog. Leonard switched legs, let his fingers trail from thigh into buttock on the way up and smirked when he caught Christopher shifting his weight against the countertop.

Pausing to lather more soap onto his hands, Leonard kept his back turned as he reached behind and rubbed his slick fingers down between his buttocks. He pressed against the tight furl of his hole, and let his head fall back with an open moan as his soapy middle finger slipped inside. As ever, the initial stretch of penetration made his cock throb and swell between his legs, and Leonard turned sideways to lean against the shower’s tiled wall, working a second finger into his ass while he wrapped his other hand around his burgeoning erection, stroking himself to full hardness.

His pleasure had built rapidly past mere spectacle towards genuine arousal when a blast of cold air dissipated the mist of steaming water around him. Blinking droplets out of his eyes, Leonard watched as a fully naked Christopher stepped into the shower and pulled the door shut behind him. He barely had the chance to admire the honed musculature of his upper arms and lean torso before he found himself pinned to the wet tiles, one arm still twisted awkwardly behind him. Christopher pulled his hand away from his cock, holding his arm effortlessly out to the side while he planted a hard thigh up between his legs.

He leaned in close, licking water away from his mouth with broad swipes of his brandy-spiced tongue. ‘Knew there was a dirty slut begging for it somewhere under that grouchy exterior of yours,’ he hushed in a deep growl that made Leonard squirm against the fingers still buried in his ass, even as he gritted his teeth into a snarl.

‘I’d be pretty damn bad at this whoring thing if there weren’t,’ he snapped defiantly, biting back another moan when Christopher pressed closer, rocking his own erection into Leonard’s hip.

‘I’d have had you exactly like this regardless of whether or not I was paying for it,’ Christopher said hotly, mouth covering his ear. ‘Admit it.’

Leonard squeezed his eyes shut, drowning in wet heat and hard flesh and an aching hope that was far more dangerous. ‘Thought you weren’t interested in lies.’

A strange noise between a chuckle and sigh brushed his throat as Christopher pulled back. ‘Fine… if you’d rather keep playing the whore…’

He tugged at Leonard’s other arm, dislodging his fingers from his ass. Leonard winced as Christopher spread both his arms out to his sides and slammed his wrists against the shower wall. ‘From now on,’ he said firmly, ‘you don’t touch yourself without my express permission. Shouldn’t be a problem if there’s nothing in this for you but the credits,’ he added with a dark smirk. ‘Understood?’

Leonard bit his lip and nodded, ignoring the throb of excitement in his dick.

‘Good.’ Christopher released his arms, found the soap, and pressed it into Leonard’s idle hand. ‘Let’s see if you can do a better job on me than you did on yourself.’

Lingering arousal warred with resentment as Leonard briskly soaped his hands again and set to washing a suddenly impassive Christopher, starting from his shoulders and working his way down. His trained hands readily found the compact musculature that had allowed the other man to pin him down so easily; despite the advanced years written into the grey hair matted across his narrow chest, Christopher’s body was in uncommonly good shape with scarcely any excess flesh to be found beneath his fingers.

There was also a great deal of tension knotted tight into his back and shoulders, and something in the steam and the silence made Leonard forget himself; his medical training took over from his purely erotic explorations, and Christopher groaned softly as Leonard kneaded precisely over each hard bundle of nerves, dissipating the ensuing pain with steady sweeps of his hands from shoulders to hips.

‘Fuck…’ Christopher breathed out, his silence breaking as he sagged back into Leonard’s hands. ‘Where the hell did you learn to do that?’

A stab of panic shot through Leonard’s chest. Rather than risk a verbal answer, he brushed his lips over the damp curls ringing the back of Christopher’s neck and dropped to his knees, trying not to over think the affectionate gesture as he lathered soap over Christopher’s hips and thighs. His legs were every bit as powerful as his upper body, but Leonard’s fingertips skittered over a bundle of scar tissue just above his knee that he bent to examine more closely under cover of massaging the large calves beneath his hands.

What he had found by touch alone was the beginning of a sprawling wound that had received medical attention far too late. Reduced now to a harmless white relief against healthily tanned skin, the injury would have been gruesome at the time, possibly life threatening.

For the first time, Leonard began to wonder why this stranger had come to Augusta in search of a doctor – was it to fix this old scar that no man in this day and age should be carrying in the first place? Where the hell had he received an injury that severe?

 _What sort of man are you?_

Christopher turned beneath his hands, and Leonard sat back on his heels as he looked up: tracking the rapid flow of water down thighs and torso, watching the rivulets part around the slender girth of an impressively long cock and finally dragging his gaze the rest of the way upward to take in the entirety of the man towering over him. Obscured by steam-cast shadow and damp tendrils of hair, Christopher’s expression was difficult to read but the hand that reached down to sweep Leonard’s wet hair from his forehead was strangely reverent.

His lips moved, spilling a few syllables that Leonard couldn’t make out at this distance over the rush of water around them but the fingers that trailed down to trace his mouth gave him a hint of what Christopher wanted.

Or maybe not, Leonard reflected, startled by Christopher’s hoarse shout of surprise when he surged up on his knees and closed his lips around his wet, bobbing cock. Christopher sagged back against the shower wall with a heavy groan, but Leonard clung close, cupping the curve of his firm ass in one hand and steadying the root of his cock with the other as he teased and sucked at the smooth flesh filling his mouth. He tongued rapidly at the slit and hummed softly as a salty musk seeped across the too-clean taste of Christopher’s skin; this was safer, something into which Leonard could disappear completely. He sucked harder, gently fondled what wouldn’t fit in his mouth with a slick hand, even batted his wet eyelashes upward when a hand settled on the back of his head.

 _Go on,_ he dared silently, hoping his eyes were speaking what his mouth could not. _No more questions, no more pretending you care… just take me, use me… go on… fuck your whore already…_

‘Oh, fuck…’ The low groan of Christopher’s voice was as intense as the fingers that tightened in his hair. Leonard drew a watery breath through his nose, bracing for the sudden slam of cock down his throat, but Christopher pushed him off instead, sending him slipping sideways on the tiles.

‘Stop,’ he rasped. Christopher’s other hand flailed out and the water stopped rushing in favour of a dripping silence that left Leonard paralyzed at his client’s feet. ‘Not like this,’ he added, panting hard through heat-flushed lips. ‘Get up…’

He reached down, closed a powerful hand around Leonard’s bicep and all but dragged him from the shower, past the rack of fluffy white towels and out of the en suite bath into the main part of the guest room. The high bed loomed invitingly across the lush carpet but they only made it as far as the small sitting area. Christopher threw him down into one of the two wingback armchairs and Leonard dropped gracelessly, shaken by the forceful removal from the shower and chilled by the water still dripping from his naked body onto the expensive furniture. ‘What the hell…’

His angry question died on a low groan as Christopher dropped to his knees, shoved Leonard’s splayed thighs even wider, and swallowed his cock whole.

Head thumping back against the upholstered chair, all Leonard could do for a long moment was stare incredulously down at the back of Christopher’s head buried in his lap. His cinnamon-brown hair was still dark and dripping with water that beaded generously at his grey-streaked temples, and Leonard started to reach a tentative hand downward in hopes that touch would make this more real, more _sensible_. Then an even tighter heat seized the head of his cock as Christopher swallowed around him, and Leonard clawed both his hands into the armrests instead for fear of doing something truly stupid.

Some clients, he reflected dazedly, panting hard and staring at the ceiling, were certainly more considerate than others, but none of them had ever been inclined to give him a blowjob. And even if they had tried, he doubted it would have been as good as _this_.

Leonard kept his iron grip on the arms of the chair, but the rest of his body was rapidly falling apart into Christopher’s mouth, hips stuttering and thighs trembling as his orgasm edged nearer to the surface, far beyond his control. ‘Wait…’ he gasped, wishing futility for the strength Christopher had shown in pushing him away back in the shower. ‘Stop… I’m gonna…’

Blue eyes flicked up at him, silently acknowledging that he had heard Leonard’s disjointed words, but instead of stopping he drew back to suckle at the head of his cock and slipped a hand down behind his balls. Leonard shouted as a finger pushed inside him, nudging his prostate with disturbing precision and shoving him clear over the edge. He bit down hard on his lower lip as he writhed helplessly on Christopher’s one teasing finger, feeling the thick liquid heat of his release flood the other man’s mouth.

He was still shaking through the aftershocks when a hand clamped down on the back of his thigh and shoved his leg up and over the arm of the chair, spreading him wider and making him slump clumsily down to the edge of his seat. The shifting of his body forced Christopher’s finger deeper inside him, and Leonard moaned weakly as a second finger worked its way inside, prising gently at the sphincter muscle and then something smaller and wet was circling his hole and _oh_ …

‘Oh… _oh_ , fuck…’ This time, Leonard did try to reach down but Christopher unseeingly slapped his arm away with his free hand, and then reached over to force his other thigh up over the other arm of the chair. With his ass fully spread open, Leonard lay helplessly exposed while Christopher licked and fucked him open with his tongue and fingers. He could feel a great deal of fluid seeping around his hole, and his face burned hot when he realized that Christopher was forcing his come right back into him. Sure enough, when Christopher finally raised his head from between Leonard’s legs, his feral smirk with slickly wet.

‘You know,’ he said, still fucking Leonard’s ass lazily with the full length of two fingers, ‘if you hadn’t made me pay for you, I might’ve bothered to listen when you said “stop” back there… but I’m pretty sure you loved it when I kept going.’

Leonard sucked in a deep breath, willing himself to stop _squirming_ already. ‘Sure I did,’ he retorted, mustering all the sarcasm he had left in him, willing the words to sound like a lie.

Christopher laughed, then bent his head and licked a wide stripe up the length of his flaccid cock where it lay defeated against his abdomen. ‘Because you’re a greedy little whore, aren’t you?’ he asked lightly, curling his fingers deep inside Leonard and eliciting a startled gasp of renewed arousal. He understand now what Christopher was playing at, trying to draw out his temper so he could fuck with the real thing instead of the detached body and mindless moans that kept Leonard sane.

It was a damn tempting idea, if only Christopher wouldn’t come to hate what he found beneath the surface.

‘If you say so, darling,’ he drawled back, eyes narrowed as he drew his legs impossibly wider and bore down hard on Christopher’s hand. ‘Ready to fuck your dirty whore now?’

Heat flared in Christopher’s startled eyes before they narrowed to meet his own scathing gaze. ‘Dirty, greedy whore,’ he muttered. ‘Already got some other man’s come dripping out of your ass…’ He yanked his fingers out and swiped them around the length of his own erection. ‘That’s all the lube you need to get fucked, isn’t it?’

Without warning, Christopher surged to his feet, knocking a perfectly angled ottoman aside. ‘Up,’ he barked, hauling Leonard out of the chair and landing a stinging slap on his ass as he shoved him aside. ‘I’m gonna make you ride my cock,’ he snarled as he dropped into the chair and fisted his cock. ‘I’m not paying you to lie on your back all night.’

A heartbeat’s worth of hesitation froze Leonard where he had landed on his hands and knees from the force of Christopher’s manhandling. Something more dangerous was winding its way through their mutual taunts, something too raw and violent to be taken lightly. Leonard’s eye flicked down to the scar on Christopher’s leg as he staggered to his feet; it had taken on the look of a warrior’s wound outside the dim fog of the shower, and he wondered with a thrill of dread what had become of the person that had inflicted it in the first place.

He had no way of knowing that much, but what Leonard did know was that Christopher could tear him apart so easily if he didn’t keep fighting back.

Christopher was still stroking himself as he stared challengingly up at Leonard; he grabbed the other man’s wrist and tore it away from his cock before straddling him in the wide armchair. Something vicious in Leonard reveled in Christopher’s visible shock, and he leaned in to bite savagely at his parted lips as he nudged and pushed Christopher beneath him until he felt the head of his cock brush up against his slicked hole. Leonard leaned back, braced himself with a hand that clawed into the scar tissue marring Christopher’s thigh, and groaned wantonly as he impaled himself to the hilt.

Once the initial shudder of penetration had subsided, Leonard set himself a long, steady rhythm riding up the full length of Christopher’s cock and rolling his hips on the way down. Bitterness smoldered itself down to lust as he fucked himself slowly, enjoying the steady building pressure of being filled so deeply, enjoying even more the drawn-out tease he was inflicting on the man beneath him. Christopher’s hands were crawling all over his body as though urging him to go faster, but Leonard merely moaned as he soaked up the combined pleasures of being touched inside and out, hips moving at the same sinuous, unforgiving pace.

‘Yes, like that…’ Christopher choked on his own moan as Leonard slid back down again. ‘That’s exactly how you like to be fucked, isn’t it?’ Deft fingertips traced the flexing muscles of his inner thighs, trailing up to squeeze hard at his ass; his fingers dug into the burning imprint of that earlier slap, drawing an embarrassing whine of arousal from Leonard’s throat.

‘Yeah… fuck, you sound so gorgeous…’ Christopher’s thumbs drew maddening circles on the hollows of his hips, triggering sensitive nerves that Leonard had assumed were long dead but now made him shudder and moan with raw need. ‘You’re allowed to touch yourself now,’ he added with a sly twist of his lips, ‘if you really want to.’

Leonard growled, though it very nearly came out as a laugh. ‘I’ll pass, thanks,’ he smirked, riding Christopher harder to ignore the renewed swelling of his cock, which throbbed far too enthusiastically when Christopher’s warm hand closed around him.

‘Can’t stop trying to piss me off, can you?’ he rasped, clever fingers teasing Leonard’s dick to full hardness in seconds. ‘You have… _fuck_ , no fucking idea, what you’re doing to me…’

‘Maybe… I do…’ Leonard threw back his head, panting hard as Christopher stroked him faster, throwing off the careful roll of his hips. ‘Maybe… oh, god…’

He whined as the perfect friction of Christopher’s hand on his cock vanished, soon replaced by the sudden bruising force of arms closing around his torso and propelling him backward. His legs wrapped instinctively around Christopher’s hips as the earth tilted sideways and he landed with a rough rush of breath on what felt like the ottoman, planted flat on his back with Christopher’s cock still buried inside him. Leonard scrambled for a handhold on the upholstery as Christopher took over fucking him with short, powerful strokes, clasping firm with his thighs and blindly grateful for Christopher’s arms curling under his shoulders and pulling him inward with each thrust.

‘Fuck… so fucking gorgeous…’ Christopher muttered nonsensically, sucking and biting over his neck and jaw. ‘Beautiful…’ His mouth latched onto Leonard’s, stifling his own helpless moans with a messy kiss that poured a deep, wrenching growl down his throat as Christopher came deep inside him. He seemed unable to stop moving through the crashing waves of his orgasm, writhing tight against Leonard’s body and continuing to lap greedily into his mouth. The hard flex of his abdomen trapping Leonard’s erection, the onslaught of sensation claiming his body was too much; he arched convulsively beneath Christopher’s downward weight, whimpering shamelessly into Christopher’s mouth as the weak spurts of a second orgasm made their skin slide slick between them.

Stunned and depleted, Leonard collapsed back against the inadequate support of the ottoman, limbs tumbling messily off its edges. Moving elsewhere would take more energy than he could muster, and in any case Christopher was still draped over him, panting hotly over his neck while restless hands roved over his chest and shoulders in an obsessive pattern that felt strangely, unbelievably good.

‘So beautiful,’ he repeated again in a low mumble. Without the rush of sex to hide the words, they made Leonard ache with longing. ‘Too beautiful…’

Fingers curled around the back of his neck, coaxing him to look up into Christopher’s eyes, their steely blue long since melted into something painfully solemn. Despite himself, that inappropriate _beautiful_ echoed back from inside Leonard’s own head.

‘I want you to stay,’ Christopher said in a rapid hush. ‘Forget the two hours… stay the night, until morning…’ He dipped his head, lips nuzzling into his throat. ‘Tell me what you want.’

Leonard sucked in a soft breath, chest tight with mad anticipation. ‘Sorry?’ he choked out.

‘How much will it cost? For the whole night.’

 _Oh._ He squeezed his eyes shut, and intoned a figure that would send any decent man running in the other direction.

‘Done.’ The kiss that lingered over his breastbone was heartfelt enough to make his hopes twitch again, much to Leonard’s frustration. ‘I’ll do it now, just…’ Christopher drew back, eyes and hands flicking rapidly over Leonard’s body. ‘Don’t move… stay just like that…’

He obeyed effortlessly, too exhausted and emotionally drained to move from his indecent sprawl over the fine upholstered furniture that felt like a sacrificial slab beneath his back. Eyes drifting shut, he wondered if Christopher would object to a short rest in that comfortable-looking bed before taking him again, and an idle fantasy of being held by those uncannily strong arms while he slept was taking pleasant shape in his mind when Christopher spoke a word so unexpected that he startled back to full alertness.

‘McCoy.’

A chill crawled sickeningly over his naked skin. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. ‘What?’ he rasped, wide eyes shooting sideways. Christopher stood in the doorway of the en suite bath, still impressively naked, staring blankly down at the comm in his hand. _Leonard’s_ comm in his hand.

 _Fuck._ He sat up abruptly, disoriented by the blood pounding in his ears.

‘I was transferring the credits… and your name…’ Christopher shook his head, and when he looked up his expression was nearly as disturbed as Leonard felt. ‘You’re Dr. Leonard McCoy… you’re… what…?’

Leonard snatched the comm from Christopher’s limp hand without ever understanding how he had come to cross the room, shoved past the startled man, and locked himself in the bathroom.

He sank down to his knees as knocking and shouts began to pound against the door, his head still too clouded by mute horror to understand what his body was protecting him from by retreating in here. He stared at the display on his comm, saw the obscene increase in the balance of Leonard McCoy’s personal account, and choked on his own bitter laugh when an alarming note chimed into place.

His account name didn’t include the title of Doctor.

‘Dr. McCoy, please…’ Christopher had stopped banging at the door and was now speaking in a calmer, steadier voice. ‘We really need to talk… you don’t understand.’

Leonard snapped his comm shut, buried his face in his hands as he struggled for rational thought. How the hell did Christopher know he was a doctor…?

‘I’m a Starfleet officer,’ he continued, and Leonard bolted upright with some indeterminate fear. ‘My colleague in Starfleet Medical… Phil Boyce, he knows your work, he…. he says you’re brilliant…’

The last was a soft hush through the bathroom door. Gritting his teeth, Leonard scrambled to his feet and rifled through the neat pile of his clothes, sending them spilling to the wet floor in his effort to get dressed.

‘He told me you were on medical probation and had left Atlanta a year ago… he tried to contact you but wasn’t having any luck but then he heard a rumour that you were working here in Augusta and I was going to be in the area visiting prospective candidates anyway, so…’ The nonsense pouring in from the other side of the door trailed off as Leonard fastened his pants with shaking fingers and shrugged into his button-down shirt.

‘All I had was your name and work history,’ Christopher continued, even quieter than before. ‘I didn’t know what you looked like… I had no idea…’

Leonard stared bleakly at his disheveled reflection in the fog-streaked mirror. There was a lovebite on the side of his neck that his shirt collar could never conceal.

‘If I had known…’ Leonard heard a low thump against the door, and imagined Christopher leaning his head there. ‘Will you come out, please? Doctor?’

Fully dressed, he checked his reflection one last time. He still looked nothing like a doctor with his wild hair and swollen lips.

‘Damn it, you can’t just hide in there all… oh.’ Christopher trailed off as Leonard pulled the door open. He kept a white-knuckled grip on the doorframe, hating himself for feeling so small when confronted by one Starfleet officer – especially when said officer was still naked, damp-haired and visibly unnerved.

‘Why were you looking for me?’ he asked hoarsely.

Christopher blinked. ‘I was sent to recruit you, of course,’ he said, as though that part of this nightmare was perfectly obvious. Leonard stared, then sagged against the doorframe with a laugh that bubbled up from some dark pit in his chest.

‘Doctor…?’ One of those strong, steady hands settled on his arm, and Leonard flinched away, shoving past Christopher as he stormed towards the guest room door.

‘Don’t,’ he snapped. ‘I’m no goddamn doctor, not anymore.’

‘Wait.’ Footsteps chased after him as he struggled with the door’s several locks. ‘Leonard, please…’

He froze, squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had called him by his first name.

‘Leonard?’

He looked over his shoulder, and wished he hadn’t when he saw the anguished pity in Christopher’s eyes. Cringing back a wave of nausea, he finally fumbled the last lock open.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, and was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The holidays have left Leonard McCoy even more short of credits than usual, driving him to offer his services to a stranger visiting Georgia on some unknown errand.

Some nine or so hazy days later, Christmas had come and gone in Augusta, Georgia.

Leonard knew Christmas had come to pass because he had received a call on his comm from Joanna two days ago. There had been an over-excited conspiratorial hush to her young voice that told Leonard that his clever girl had placed the call behind Jocelyn’s back, and he had smiled widely as she had eagerly rattled off all the details of her day, peppered through with scathing rebukes against one Clay Treadway and his misguided attempts to win Joanna’s favour.

‘I wore your earrings all day, Daddy,’ she had said, proud and giggling. ‘Clay couldn’t stand it, I could tell.’

‘That’s my girl,’ he had laughed back, but once the call had abruptly terminated – Leonard thought he had heard Jocelyn’s voice in the background – he had sunk back into his usual sullen mood. If all he could offer Joanna was a spiteful nature and jewelry he couldn’t afford without whoring himself out to make up the difference, maybe she would do better with Treadway for a father after all.

Thankfully, the six hundred credits had stretched far enough to cover a couple decent bottles of bourbon as well as food and rent for the month. With a continued lack of work and paranoia of shadowy Starfleet spies keeping him confined to his one-room apartment at the fringe of downtown Augusta, Leonard had no reservations about pouring out his second measure of the afternoon. The first bourbon had done nothing to ease the headache that had plagued him through his morning exercises and reading; a second, or a third, might numb the blunt edge of distraction that made it impossible for Leonard to concentrate on anything other than the hollow ache in his chest.

He would stop at three, Leonard reminded himself sternly as he swirled the bourbon in his glass and frowned at the empty top third of his second bottle. Lately, whenever he indulged as far as four (or five, or six), the shape of his shame started to look a lot less like Joanna, and a hell of a lot more like Christopher.

A very small proportion of that shame resided in the anonymous credit chip in his bedside table that held the ludicrous sum Christopher had transferred to him moments before the truth had punched them both in the face. Leonard had tried to reverse the payment once he had stumbled blindly home that night, but Christopher had been using an unmarked credit chip that gave no indications of the last name and rank that he had never divulged. A more decent man might have returned to the Partridge Inn the next morning, might have tried to personally return the money before Christopher had checked out or made inquiries with the concierge, but the dreadful sense that he could no longer call himself a decent man kept him well away from Summerhill.

Instead, he left the credits untouched, drowned any and all lost possibilities in bourbon, and more or less successfully ignored any urges to wallow greedily in every sordid memory of Christopher’s hands on his body. More or less.

 _No more than three,_ he thought again, taking a sip and rubbing out the twinge of hangover at his temple. _Not like yesterday, not again._

His head was pounding. No… no, his door was pounding. Leonard stared incredulously at the battered beige-coated aluminum door. He never received visitors to this shithole because he never gave out his address. Odds were that one of his charming neighbours had a lost guest, or was even more drunk than he had been last night.

The pounding persisted, loud and agonizing inside his head. Slamming down his drink on the countertop, Leonard stormed towards the door, clumsily released the door’s several locks and threw it open.

‘You’ve got the wrong damn address, you…’ His snarl died rapidly on his tongue, pushed aside by the hard, sickening leap of his heart into his throat.

He suspected any remaining shred of self-preservation he might have left was well and truly fucked when the first coherent thought to emerge from his blown mind was that Christopher looked ridiculously sexy in uniform.

‘Leonard.’ The low rumble of his voice was rich with relief. Leonard’s fingers tightened on the door’s cold edge as he wondered whether slamming it in his face now would be safest for them both.

‘What…’ he croaked, then coughed and licked his dry lips, already feeling his face growing hot with mortification. ‘How did you know where I… Why are you… I thought you left town the next day,’ he finished, wincing at the dumb accusation in his voice.

‘Change of plans.’ Christopher’s pale blue eyes roved restlessly over Leonard with more curiosity than lust; Leonard knew there was nothing attractive about his faded long-sleeved pullover, his tattered jeans and conspicuously bare feet. Suddenly self-conscious, he looked away, scratching at the several days’ growth of stubble on his jaw.

‘Can we talk?’ Christopher asked. ‘Inside, preferably?’

A rude rebuke pricked at Leonard’s stuck tongue, turned sour when he realized his didn’t have the strength to spit it out. ‘Get in here, then,’ he grumbled, shuffling backward. ‘Folks around here think I’m some sort of reclusive lunatic, and I’d hate for that shiny uniform of yours to make them think otherwise.’

Leonard moved ahead into his tiny apartment, taking in the tatty furnishings and bare walls with a newly critical eye. The seating options were limited to his narrow, unmade bed and an oversized armchair leaking stuffing from its seams; after a lingering, uncomfortable look at the bed, Leonard rushed to clear his PADDs and paper-bound notebooks from the armchair. ‘Have a seat,’ he offered gruffly, homing back upon his abandoned drink. ‘There’s bourbon if you’re interested,’ he added, unable to repress years of training in Southern hospitality, even if this hovel offered nothing of the sort.

‘Sounds good. Thank you.’ Christopher sat, his sleek grey uniform a ridiculous contrast against the lurid pattern of the chair’s upholstery, and leaned forward to examine the work Leonard had moved to the coffee table and floor. Leonard watched him warily as he hastily wiped out a second glass he found at the back of the kitchenette’s cupboard and poured out two fingers of bourbon.

‘I thought you said you weren’t a doctor anymore,’ Christopher said wryly, accepting his drink with an incisive squint of his eyes.

‘Research ain’t medicine,’ he retorted, glancing at the bed again before opting to stay on his feet. ‘It’s just… research.’

Somehow Leonard doubted Christopher had tracked him down to hear about his feeble attempts to adapt the cure for Pyrrhoneuritis to address related diseases in the neurodegenerative spectrum. With a harsh rush of resolve, he circled the bed and pulled open his bedside drawer.

‘I assume you came for this.’ He tossed the credit chip at Christopher, quirked an eyebrow when the other man snatched it from mid-air with barely a blink.

‘What is this?’ Christopher turned the chip over in his fingers, brow furrowing as realization hit. ‘You’re not returning the money I paid you?’

‘Just the second payment.’ Leonard took a bracing swallow of bourbon to burn away some of the humiliation rising up his throat. ‘I kept the six hundred. I earned it.’

Christopher threw him a look so fleeting it defied definition, then shook his head. ‘I didn’t come here for a refund,’ he said, throwing the chip in among the detritus of Leonard’s medical research with a carelessness that made his hackles rise.

‘That’s not my money,’ Leonard said stiffly, teeth clenched.

‘I don’t want it.’ Christopher leaned back in the armchair, his relaxed posture betrayed by the steel-glint of determination in his eyes. Leonard stared, then groaned.

‘Oh, I get it,’ he drawled, sweating fingers tightening around his glass. ‘Came to collect what you paid for, did you? Only I don’t normally take the job home with me so unless all this,’ he gestured messily around the small, impoverished room with his drink, ‘is really turning you on, I don’t think…’

Christopher’s gaze had drifted along Leonard’s rumpled bed sheets, but snapped hastily away when he spoke up to interrupt. ‘No,’ he said sharply, refusing now to look at either Leonard or his bed. ‘No, that’s not why I’m here.’

Leonard stubbornly choked back a whisper of disappointment creeping over his skin. ‘Then why _are_ you here?’

Christopher stared down into his untouched drink. ‘Why don’t you sit down first?’

‘Because it’s my place, and I don’t want to,’ he answered tightly. ‘Start talking.’

After a prolonged examination of his bourbon, Christopher leaned forward and set it on the coffee table instead. ‘I should introduce myself,’ he said. ‘I’m Captain Christopher Pike, Commandant of Cadets at Starfleet Academy.’

‘Captain,’ Leonard grunted. ‘Figures.’

A small smile twitched at Christopher’s mouth. ‘You left before we could discuss it in detail,’ he continued, a touch delicately, ‘but Starfleet really could use someone like you in the Medical branch. If you would consider enlisting…’ he trailed off as Leonard broke down into weary chuckles. ‘Why do you have a hard time believing that?’ he asked, and Leonard sucked in a steadying breath, trying to cushion anger around his rattled nerves.

‘Because it’s a ridiculous idea,’ he spat. ‘In case you didn’t notice, I’m not exactly the military type. Tend to talk back instead of taking orders, see.’ Christopher’s smile widened fondly, which only increased Leonard’s exasperation. ‘And you seem awfully quick to overlook the fact that you went looking for a doctor and got a whore instead.’

Christopher’s smile faded with a low sigh. ‘Frankly, it’s easier to pretend we’d met under different circumstances,’ he admitted. ‘Phil assured me you could be one of the greatest doctors of your age so I never would have expected…’ Christopher trailed off, rubbed his fingers over his furrowed brow. ‘Who the hell prostitutes themselves these days anyway?’

Leonard stared hard at him. ‘Anyone who needs the credits,’ he answered dully. ‘As you damn well know, there’s always someone willing to pay for it.’

Christopher dragged his hand down over his eyes. ‘I wasn’t lying when I said I normally didn’t do that sort of thing,’ he groaned from behind his hand. ‘Actually, it was a first for me.’

‘Really.’ He could feel a cynical grimace twisting his face. ‘Funny thing, you changing a decent habit all of a sudden just because I was there.’

The hand covering Christopher’s face dropped, and Leonard’s breath caught at the fiercely accusing glare the other man threw back at him. He froze where he stood, his heart pounding violently against his ribcage until Christopher lowered his gaze and reached for the drink he had discarded.

‘Hilarious,’ he agreed dryly. He took a long drink of his bourbon, cringing as the alcohol burned down his throat. With a dry, uncomfortable swallow of his own, Leonard stared down into his drink.

‘What happened to your leg?’ he asked bluntly. Christopher blinked, clearly thrown.

‘Sorry?’

‘The scar on your leg.’ Leonard nodded in the direction of the injury where it lay concealed beneath his grey uniform trousers. ‘The one you shouldn’t have except that you were left untreated for too long. Either that, or your doctor was criminally incompetent.’

Christopher smiled ruefully. ‘Had a bit of a run-in with the local population of Selin IV on my last tour,’ he explained, rubbing surreptitiously over the ghost of the injury. ‘Remarkable weaponry, sort of a cross between a spear and a scythe with extra barbed bits. Hurt like a bitch.’

Leonard shuddered. ‘That’s a hell of a sales pitch for Starfleet,’ he muttered sarcastically, taking another swallow of his bourbon.

‘I healed,’ Christopher countered stubbornly. ‘Eventually. But Leonard…’ When he looked up again, the pain in his eyes was of a sort that had nothing to do with grotesque leg wounds. ‘This thing you’ve been doing… one day soon, it’s going to be too much for you.’

‘I’ve got no idea what you mean,’ he sighed impatiently.

‘Sure you do,’ Christopher snapped back. ‘Hell, I was nearly too much for you, and we both know it. What happens when one of your customers decides to push you even further, and you’re too damned proud to walk away?’

Momentarily blindsided, Leonard finally dropped onto the edge of his bed, if only because sinking down against the wall would have said too much. Plucking his words carefully from the fine beads of bourbon clinging to his tongue, he intoned them precisely at the damp patch of wall past Christopher’s head.

‘When you’re training to be a doctor,’ he said, ‘there’s this moment that rolls along, sooner than you might think, when seeing the insides of a human body laid to waste before your eyes just doesn’t hit you the way it should. You process it differently, and next thing you know, you learn to think of the body as an abstract thing, a machine… you’re a better doctor for it, so long as you’re careful not to let that detachment bleed into the rest of your work. You understand?’

‘No.’ Hunched forward, Christopher rubbed a hand over his face. ‘I mean, yes. Yes, I do, but I don’t know what this has to do with what I asked.’

‘Three months ago, I followed some hot-shot diplomat up to his suite and realized that he had six of his dearest colleagues waiting for us.’ Leonard snapped his gaze away from the damp patch to look Christopher in the eye. ‘It was that same kind of moment. It’s already been and gone.’

‘Oh…’ The sound exhaled itself out of Christopher’s deflating body. ‘Oh, god… Leonard, I’m so sorry, I didn’t–’

‘Don’t,’ he interrupted sharply. If his hands shook, it was from the hangover, nothing else. ‘I’m not going to sit here pouring out my heart just so you can feel better about yourself.’

Christopher snapped his jaw shut, but his concerned gaze remained fixed on Leonard. ‘Then I still don’t understand. You already know the risks and you’re still doing this.’

‘It’s like I said, I need the credits.’ Leonard cast a tired eye around his stale room, its bare walls and stained carpet. ‘I know it doesn’t look like much, but I still have to pay for it.’

‘You could still do better than this.’ Christopher followed his visual scan of the apartment with a disapproving frown. ‘You deserve better than this.’

‘Maybe I don’t.’

The reply dropped automatically from Leonard’s lips. He regretted it immediately, and cringed when Christopher startled his attention back around to him.

‘You really do believe that, don’t you?’

He sounded surprised, and maybe a little sad. Leonard shrugged, focusing on the drink in his hands.

‘Phil… Dr. Boyce at Starfleet Medical, that is, he told me about your father’s illness, everything that happened afterwards.’ For the first time since he showed up, Christopher sounded cautious, uncertain of how to continue. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how hard it’s been to deal with that…’

‘No, you really can’t.’

Christopher pressed on, willfully ignoring Leonard’s defiant reply. ‘But I’m sure your father would have liked to see you move on and do something worthwhile with your life instead of… this.’

Leonard grimaced, not sure which he resented more: the paternal goading, or the fact that Christopher was painfully right. ‘And if I did decide that joining Starfleet would do my dead papa proud,’ he asked sarcastically, ‘what the hell would you tell them about where you found me?’

‘I found you working here in Augusta,’ he said plainly. ‘Nothing more. It’s the truth.’

Leonard smirked, unconvinced. ‘Of a sort. And I suppose you’ll be happy to keep pretending I was just doing the odd bit of lab work out here so long as you’ve got a biddable whore ready to suck your cock in exchange for the favour.’

A shadow of angered disgust crossed Christopher’s face. He opened his mouth to reply, then paused, head tilting thoughtfully to the side. ‘You know,’ he said, forcibly light, ‘that’s the second time now you’ve accused me of coming here with the sole purpose of blackmailing you into my bed. If I didn’t know better, I’d start to wonder why you’re so preoccupied with the idea.’

Leonard scowled, his neck growing hot. ‘You sure think highly of yourself, don’t you?’

Christopher shook his head. ‘Not particularly at the moment, no.’

He took a longer swallow of his bourbon; Leonard tried not to stare at the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat.

‘As much as this might spoil that lovely persecution complex you’ve been working on,’ Christopher said finally, a nasty edge entering his voice, ‘you’re not the only one here who’s been beating himself up over that night. Do you suppose I’m proud of what I put you through?’

Eyes widening, Leonard sat up stiffly at the edge of his bed. That calm, reasonable tone of Christopher’s was eroding away into something dark and raw that seemed too unsafe to answer.

‘Do you think I didn’t consider the risk I was taking by tracking you down?’ Christopher’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘I’m Commandant of Cadets at the Academy. I’ve been promised a state of the art flagship as soon as construction is complete, and will have the final word on who gets assigned to serve on my crew. You could have yourself one hell of a comfortable time in Starfleet just by pushing the right buttons.’

Leonard shook his head, dumbfounded. ‘I don’t understand…’

‘Come on, Leonard,’ he sneered, ‘you’re a sharp bastard. What’s to stop you from threatening to tell the Admiralty every dirty detail of what I did to you if I don’t push through a few favours here and there? Even the slightest rumour that I had paid a cadet for sex would be enough to ruin my career. You could destroy me.’

‘But…’ Stunned and confused, Leonard struggled for words. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said numbly.

‘Why not?’ There was an aggressive edge to the question that echoed the slightly desperate glint in Christopher’s eyes. ‘Don’t you think I’m the sort of man who has it coming to him?’

‘Of course not,’ Leonard snapped tiredly.

‘Sure you don’t.’ Christopher dropped his head down between his shoulders with a harsh laugh. ‘You only thought I’d come here to rape you, or else I’m trying to drag you off to the Academy so I could bend you over my desk whenever I felt like it…’

‘Stop that.’ Leonard leaned inward, hands braced on the coffee table between them. ‘Look, what I said… it wasn’t…. just forget it, alright?’ The withdrawn huddle of Christopher’s body was horrible to witness when compared to his memories of this man’s confidence, his strength. ‘You’re a good man,’ he added quietly.

Christopher looked up, the fine lines of his face creased and tired. ‘I’m really not.’

A sharp throb of empathy cut through Leonard as he took in the exhausted slouch of Christopher’s trim body in the armor of his uniform, the shadows darkening his pale blue eyes. ‘A less than good man wouldn’t have come here at all,’ he pointed out cautiously.

‘I had to find you.’ He made it sound as necessary as breathing. ‘I had to make sure you still had the opportunity to take what Starfleet has to offer even after I fucked it up for you. I had to do something to make it right after the way I used you.’ With a small shudder, Christopher stared down at his hands where they tightly clasped each other between his knees. ‘But that doesn’t make me a good person.’

‘Why the hell not?’

Christopher’s shoulders slumped, and when he looked up again there was as much defiance as resignation in his eyes. ‘Because even now,’ he said, his low voice broken, ‘I can’t stop thinking about how much I want to push you back onto that bed and kiss and touch every gorgeous inch of you until you come for me again.’

Blood rushed hot through Leonard’s body, left him light-headed and speechless in its wake. As his mouth moved wordlessly, fighting to come up with something that wasn’t a raw plea for _yes now please oh god please_ , Christopher visibly paled, then jumped to his feet.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly, tugging hard at his impeccable tunic so the fabric pulled taut against his hard chest. ‘Sorry, that was beyond inappropriate. I… I’ll show myself out.’

Despite the heat that was thrumming through Leonard’s body, his limbs felt uselessly numb as he watched Christopher pick up one of his notebooks and his ink pen, deftly managing both the antiquated things as he frantically scribbled something down.

‘If you change your mind,’ he muttered, ‘there’s a recruitment centre in Atlanta that will arrange transport for you, help you with enlistment procedures… anything you need. I’ll give you their comm channel so you can ask them any questions you may have…’ Christopher trailed off, the pen going still as he clearly ran out of things to say or write. He dropped them both in his abandoned chair and stalked towards the door, boot heels loud on the worn carpet.

‘Wait.’ His voice hoarse, Leonard pushed off the edge of the bed, stopping at the coffee table before dashing past the chair and blocking Christopher at his door.

‘You forgot this.’ He held out the credit chip, almost regretted the move when Christopher crumpled at the sight of it but he nodded once and pocketed it without argument.

‘Please,’ he sighed wearily. ‘I don’t…’

‘Why do you still want me to join Starfleet?’ he asked, staring hard into Christopher’s withdrawn features. ‘If there’s such a risk that I’ll ruin your career?’

A tired, miserable smile stretched his lips. ‘I know you never would,’ he said, quiet and fond. ‘I can tell you’re too good to try.’

Leonard frowned dubiously. ‘You can’t know that for sure.’

Christopher shrugged off his doubt like it was nothing. ‘I trust you.’

Another rush of stunned paralysis gripped Leonard, and Christopher had already reached past him to open the door before he found his tongue again. He slammed the door shut with the flat of his hand, blocked it with his body. An apprehensive frown furrowed Christopher’s brow.

‘Leonard…’

Before he could change his mind, Leonard curled his hand around the back of Christopher’s high collar and tugged him forward into a kiss.

A low, incoherent sound vibrated against his lips, but Leonard closed his eyes and focused instead on reacquainting himself with the shape of Christopher’s mouth as it moved tentatively against his own. He licked his way deeper, found the hint of his own common bourbon and swept his tongue after Christopher’s own taste instead, drinking him in like a beggar in a desert.

As he indulged himself, Leonard waited, brushed a questioning thumb repeatedly through the finest hint of curls at Christopher’s nape but the other man remained passive and open beneath his mouth: moaning beautifully, meeting his tongue with everything he had but demanding nothing more than what he was already given.

When he finally pulled back with a last little nip at Christopher’s mouth, Leonard nearly lost his resolve at the sight of his flushed face and wet, shining lips. ‘Tell me you wrote down your own comm channel, too,’ he said, the words thick in his throat.

Christopher stared dazedly up at him. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted. ‘I did.’

‘Ever the optimist.’ Leonard managed a small smile as he stepped regretfully aside, wanting nothing more than to keep Christopher for hours, days more. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he promised, opening the door. ‘If you don’t mind telling me a bit more about this Starfleet nonsense.’

The blank astonishment on Christopher’s face resolved itself into quiet understanding. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he agreed gently.

He lifted a hand, hesitated, and at Leonard’s assenting nod brushed his fingers through the wild strands of his hair, smoothing it down and trailing gently along his neck to the hollow below his throat where that familiar ache used to live. Leonard shivered into the touch, missed it immediately as Christopher turned to go.

As far as trust went, it was a good start. Leonard thoughtfully traced his lips with the rough pad of his thumb, and poured another drink.


End file.
